movie gourmet

KAYMAK: ménage à trois times two

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Sara Klimoska in KAYMAK. Courtesy of Kaymak.

Kaymak follows the relationships of two couples in the same apartment building in teeming Skopje, North Macedonia. Eva (Kamka Tocinovski), a rich banker, lives in the penthouse with her husband Metodi (Filip Trajkovic), who wants a child; Eva, not a candidate for Mother of Year, doesn’t want her life disrupted by the bother of pregnancy and childbirth, so she plucks a young relative, Dosta (Sara Klimoska), from the countryside to serve as a surrogate. Dosta is developmentally disabled and lives with her family in an impoverished, backward village. Soon, Eva and Metodi are getting more than they expected and more than they can handle.

The other couple lives in a modest ground floor apartment. Caramba (Aleksandar Mikic ) is a goofy security guard; Danche (Simona Spirovska) is always exhausted from pulling double shifts at a bakery. Day to day drudgery has drained their relationship of passion, and Caramba is always on Danche’s very last nerve. When Caramba meets the comely and oversexed cheese vendor Violetka (Ana Stojanovska), their lives, too, are upended.

The characters have lots of sex, both joyously kinky and cringingly transgressive. It gets very funny, and Manchevski even drops in a delicious nod to the Spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone.

Ana Stojanovska and Simona Spirovska in KAYMAK. Courtesy of Kaymak.

However, Manchevski imbues Kaymak with more meaning than a mere sex romp, exploring both the imperative to parent and the elastic strictures of of monogamy. There’s tragedy (and apparent tragedy) here, amid all the absurdity. Manchevski told A Good Movie to Watch, “People usually want their films to have a consistent and predictable tone. Now, my preference as a film viewer, but also as a filmmaker, is more adventurous. I don’t mind disruption. On the contrary, I cherish it.“

All the characters, rich or not, enjoy kaymak, a versatile creamy milk reduction used in the Balkans as an appetizer, a condiment and a fast food breakfast. 

Manchevski was Oscar-nominated for his acclaimed 1994 Macedonian feature Before the Rain. That Manchevski debut won the Golden Lion at Venice and was singled out as a masterpiece by Roger Ebert and The New York Times.  Since then, Manchevski has been teaching in New York and directed an episode of The Wire. 

Kaymak is his third film to play Cinequest, after Bikini Moon, my choice as the best film of the 2017 Cinequest, and Willow, a triptych that plumbs the heartaches and joys of having children. Kaymak is the raunchiest and most overtly comedic of the Manchevski films I’ve seen

The performances in Kaymak are all excellent. (Klimoska bears a passing resemblance to Kristin Stewart.)

Cinequest is hosting the US premiere of Kaymak. Find the trailer on the Cinequest Kaymak page.

UNDER THE INFLUENCER: living for likes

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Taylor Joree Scorse in UNDER THE INFLUENCER. Courtesy of Cinequest.

The comedy Under the Influencer is a fable of identity. Tori (Taylor Joree Scorse) is a YouTuber who has built an immense following by appealing to the most frivolous interests of 13-year-old girls. But she’s becoming stale to that audience, and her popularity is tenuous. Having achieved so much success by selling a version of herself, Tori has become very invested, perhaps melded, with her screen persona. Tori is bratty, despite the shallow silliness that she trades in, and she’s ripe for a comeuppance.

Tori seeks to pivot her brand, but her audience is fickle, and she is ambushed by the treachery of two other social media stars. Since her self-confidence rises and falls with the toxicity of on-line comments, she’s at risk of implosion.

This is a glimpse into a professional social media world unknown to some of us, but writer-director Alex Haughey, having spent a year producing for a major YouTuber, knows the scene.

It looks like we’re in for a savage mockumentary until there’s major change in tone when Tori is forced to come to terms with how her own identity is so wrapped up in the validation of views and instant likes or dislikes. It turns out that Tori may not be a ditz after all – she’s just been playing one on YouTube. There’s a revelatory flashback showing how the 13-year-old Tori first dipped her toes into social media (after we have already seen what she’s become).

Taylor Joree Scorse explodes with energy as Tori, completely believable as both the superficial and the more reflective versions of Tori. Spencer Vaughn Kelly is very good as an almost mystically charismatic stranger Tori encounters.

This is the second film by Alex Haughey, whose debut Prodigy, a psychological thriller with paranormal elements, was one of the top films at the 2017 Cinequest.

Under the Influencer is topical, funny and, ultimately, sweet and hopeful. Cinequest is hosting the world premiere of Under the Influencer.

Movies to See Right Now

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Photo caption: Melvin Gregg in SHARE?, world premiere at Cinequest. Courtesy of Cinequest.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – a remembrance of master director William Friedkin and a preview of Cinequest, Silicon Valley’s own film festival, which begins next week.

REMEMBRANCE

Robbie Robertson (front center) in THE LAST WATZ.

Robbie Robertson was justifiably famous as a musician and a songwriter, fronting The Band with its many hits and backing Bob Dylan’s transition from acoustic to electric. In fact, I was introduced to Robertson on-screen as a subject of Martin Scorsese’s documentary The Last Waltz, still one of the handful of greatest concert films. But Robertson also became a significant force in the music of cinema, amassing almost 300 screen credits on IMDb as a composer, music supervisor or contributor to the soundtrack. Robertson’s behind the screen work included many collaborations with Scorsese, the last being the heralded Killers of the Flower Moon, to be released later this year. Robertson identified as an indigenous Canadian, whose mother was Cayuga and Mohawk from the Six Nations Reserve. 

CURRENT MOVIES

WATCH AT HOME

Fred Rogers in WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR?

The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:

  • Won’t You Be My Neighbor?: gentleness from ferocity. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, redbox.
  • Land Ho!: rowdy geezer roadtrip to Iceland. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
  • Beast: finally unleashed … and untethered. Amazon (included with Prime), AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, redbox.
  • The Imposter: a jaw dropper. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
  • The Secret in Their Eyes: Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
  • NUTS!: the rise and fall of a testicular empire. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
  • The Stopover: PTSD takes more than an umbrella drink…Amazon, AppleTV.

ON TV

Anthony Quinn in BARABBAS
Anthony Quinn in BARABBAS

Biblical epics were a staple of cinema until the mid-1960s when they petered out with The Greatest Story Ever Told and The Bible: In the Beginning. If you’re going to watch just one Sword-and-Sandal classic, I recommend going full tilt with Barrabas, broadcast by Turner Classic Movies on August 16. This 1961 cornball stars Anthony Quinn as the Zelig-like title character.

The story begins with the thief Barabbas avoiding crucifixion when Pontius Pilate swaps him out for Jesus (this part is actually in the Bible). Because the Crucifixion isn’t enough action for a two-hour 17-minute movie, Barabbas is soon sent off as a slave to the salt mines, where he is rescued by a miraculously timely earthquake. He then joins the Roman gladiators, complete with a javelin-firing squad, gets lost in the catacombs and emerges to the Burning of Rome. He has encounters with the Emperor Nero and the Apostle Peter before he converts to Christianity – just in time for the mass crucifixion. Watch for an uncredited Sharon Tate as a patrician in the arena.

William Friedkin: master of gripping cinema

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Gene Hackman in the car chase in William Friedkin’s THE FRENCH CONNECTION.

Director William Friedkin, one of the most significant filmmakers of the past 50 years, has died at 87. Friedkin is best known for his two great films, The French Connection and The Exorcist, each groundbreaking in its own way. The French Connection, despite an anti-hero with off-putting characteristics and a setting in NYC at its grimiest, had audiences on the the edge of their seats, and its car chase (before CGI) is still the gold standard. The Exorcist was the first horror movie to be nominated for Oscar (a recognition previously unthinkable).

Friedkin also made two LGBTQ-themed films well before other Hollywood mainstreamers – The Boys in the Band and Cruising (the latter controversial in the LGBTQ community).

Friedkin also had a gift for neo-noir, and his To Live and Die in L.A. has become a noir cult favorite. Perhaps burdened by the outrageousness of writer Tracy Letts’ perverse and taboo-centric story, the delicious neo-noir Killer Joe has never received its due. Less colorful than those two, The Brink’s Job is a solid and entertaining crime film.

And The Exorcist wasn’t Friedkin’s only foray into foray. The grievously overlooked Bug still stands up today.

For some reason, Friedkin’s own favorite work was the disappointing slog Sorcerer (although it doesn’t deserve to be reviled as much as Jade, the only really bad Friedkin movie I’ve seen.) 

At 87, Friedkin just completed his final film, The Caine Mutiny Court Martial.

Like another of my favorite directors, Sam Fuller, Friedkin was never too high-minded to embrace the lurid, which was manifested in The Exorcist, Bug, Cruising and Killer Joe. He enjoyed seeing himself as a bit of a rascal, and claimed to have bribed a NYC transit official $40,000 to permit staging the The French Connection car chase.

Friedkin was also a delightfully irascible raconteur, which I got to appreciate in-person at a San Francisco preview screening of Killer Joe in 2011.

Linda Blair in William Friedkin’s THE EXORCIST.

Cinequest returns LIVE on August 15

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Photo caption: Harris Dickinson and Lola Campbell in Charlotte Regan’s SCRAPPER at Cinequest. Courtesy of Kino Lorber.

Cinequest, Silicon Valley’s own major film festival, returns live and in-person August 15, back in downtown San Jose, with screenings August 15-24 at the California, Theatre and the Hammer Theater. For August 24-30, the program moves to the ShowPlace ICON Theatre in Mountain View. That means TWO opening nights (San Jose and Mountain View).

Highlights of the 2023 Cinequest include:

  • Films from Korea, Poland, China, Iran, Bulgaria, India, Australia, and Mexico, and I’ve already screened Cinequest features from North Macedonia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Romania, Germany, and the UK, too.
  • New movies with Timothy Spall, Jennifer Esposito, Anabella Sciorra, Dermot Mulroney, Bradley Whitford, Alice Braga, Harris Dickinson, Abigail Breslin, Ryan Philippe, Mena Suvari and Steve Zahn.
  • See it here FIRST: Scrapper is among the movies slated for theatrical release later this year.

And, at Cinequest, it’s easy to meet the filmmakers.

As usual, I’ll be covering Cinequest rigorously with features and movie recommendations. This year, of my top seven films, five are world premieres; six are the first or second films by their director, and the seventh is by an Oscar-nominated, veteran filmmaker.

I usually screen (and write about) over thirty Cinequest films from around the world. Bookmark my CINEQUEST 2023 page, with links to all my coverage (links on the individual movies will start to go live on Sunday, August 13).

Cinequest at San Jose’s California Theatre

Movies to See Right Now

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Photo caption: Paula Beer, Enno Trebs, Langston Uibel and Thomas Schubert in AFIRE. Courtesy of Janus Films.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – new reviews of two of the Best Movies of 2023 – So Far: Christian Petzold’s ultimately redemptive Afire and Greta Gerwig’s delightfully funny Barbie. Plus, a new review of the breezy comedy treat Theater Camp.

Cinequest is coming up on August 11, and I’ll be posting my usual extensive preview and recommendations.

REMEMBRANCE

Paul Reubens was the star of and the creative force behind the goodhearted and gloriously weird Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.

CURRENT MOVIES

WATCH AT HOME

Paul Eenhoorn and Earl Lynn Nelson in LAND HO!

The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:

  • Land Ho!: rowdy geezer roadtrip to Iceland. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
  • Beast: finally unleashed … and untethered. Amazon (included with Prime), AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, redbox.
  • Won’t You Be My Neighbor?: gentleness from ferocity. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, redbox.
  • The Imposter: a jaw dropper. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
  • The Secret in Their Eyes: Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
  • NUTS!: the rise and fall of a testicular empire. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
  • The Stopover: PTSD takes more than an umbrella drink…Amazon, AppleTV.

ON TV

Robert Ryan in THE SET-UP
Robert Ryan in THE SET-UP

On August 7, Turner Classic Movies will present The Set-Up (1949), one of the great film noirs and one of the very best boxing movies. Robert Ryan plays a washed-up boxer that nobody believes can win again, not even his long-suffering wife (Audrey Totter).  His manager doesn’t even bother to tell him that he is committed to taking a dive in his next fight.  But what if he wins?

Director Robert Wise makes use of real-time narrative, then highly innovative. Watch for the verisimilitude of the bar where the deal goes down.

Robert Ryan in THE SET-UP
Robert Ryan in THE SET-UP

THEATER CAMP: show people in the making

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Photo caption: Molly Gordon and Ben Platt in THEATER CAMP. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.

The good-hearted and relentlessly funny Theater Camp sends up the world of drama nerds without a hint of meanness. When the beloved founder (Amy Sedaris) of a summer theater camp for kids falls into a coma, the camp staff must run the summer program themselves. One challenge is that the founder’s son Troy (Jimmy Tatro) is now in charge, and he is a bozo brimming with misplaced confidence, one of those guys whose every instinct is enthusiastically wrong.

Because the camp staff are show people and the campers are show people in the making, there’s plenty of grist for comedy. The kids are budding prima donnas and the staff are flamboyant, temperamental and eccentric.

It’s an affectionate skewering by filmmakers who know the subculture well. Theater Camp was written by Molly Gordon, Ben Platt, Noah Galvin and Nick Lieberman. Gordon and Lieberman directed, and Gordon, Platt and Galvin play major roles as the camp’s faculty.

An avalanche of funny bits bury the audience as directors Gordon and Lieberman and editor Jon Philpot keep the laughs coming at a madcap pace. There are big jokes and little jokes; I found it very funny that Gordon’s character is named Rebecca-Diane.

The Big Show at the end, a tribute to their comatose founder titled Joan Still, is destined to surpass Springtime for Hitler in The Producers as the worst musical-within-a-movie until it is rescued by an unexpected tour de force by Noah Galvin.

Galvin’s performance is the showiest, but everyone in the cast is excellent, particularly Gordon and Platt. Patti Harrison is very good as a corporate predator with Troy in her sights, and Owen Thiele sparkles as the camp’s most flamboyant teacher.

And where did they find these kids? Some of the kids who play the campers are unbelievably talented.

Theater Camp is a breezy treat.

AFIRE: the summer of his discontent

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Thomas Schubert and Paula Beer in AFIRE. Courtesy of Janus Films.

Christian Petzold’s Afire is an agreeable slow burn that builds to a revelatory conclusion. The lumpy, dour Leon (Thomas Schubert) needs to polish off his second novel. He and his friend Felix (Langston Uibel) head off for a week at the woodsy vacation cottage owned by Felix’s family, a short walk to the beach on the Baltic Sea. They are seeking artistic inspiration, Leon for his novel and Felix for his photography portfolio. But they’re not even there yet when things start going off the rails.

Felix’s car breaks down and they have to hoof it through the forest. Upon arrival, they learn that Felix’s mother has also invited another guest, Nadja, and the guys will need to share the remaining room. They go to bed without meeting Nadja, but she returns late with company, and the guys are kept awake by the boisterous lovemaking in her room next door.

Focused on their own situation, Felix and Leon are vaguely aware that wildfires are raging inland, but they’re a few meters from the sea and the ocean winds are blowing across them toward the fire, As people at the nearby seaside resort town go about their holidays, faraway sirens and the fire-fighting aircraft overhead are ominous.

Felix rolls with the punches, but each setback makes the grumpy Leon more aggrieved. Each annoyance makes Leon harrumph, roll his eyes and stalk off complaining about the distraction to his work. Leon is creatively blocked, but is it from the distractions?

He’s really afraid that his manuscript is shitty, and his day of reckoning, a meeting with his kind publisher (Matthias Brandt), is this week. Self-absorbed in the best of times, Leon’s insecurities are making him beat himself up and mask it all with offended self-importance.

Leon and Felix meet Nadja (Paul Beer), who turns out to be charming. Felix befriends the handsome lifeguard Devid (Enno Trebs), who has been Nadja’s nocturnal playmate, and soon the four are hanging out together – Leon grudgingly.

Thomas Schubert, Paula Beer, Langston Uibel and Enno Trebs in AFIRE. Courtesy of Janus Films.

As we watch Leon stumble around in his behavioral misfires, it seems that we are watching a comedy of manners. But Afire evolves into a study of creative self-sabotage until a heartbreaking tragedy, a moment of redemption, and a final hopeful glimmer of personal fulfillment. It’s the best final fifteen minutes of any film this year, unpredictable but grounded in reality and humanity, and emotionally powerful.

Afire works because the protagonist doesn’t alienate the audience, even though he is irritable and irritating. Petzold’s writing and Schubert’s performance is such that we don’t give up on this unlovable loser. As much as his thoughtlessness vexes the others, his behavior is really only mean-spirited once. Clearly, he must be talented because his first novel was good enough to get him an advance on his second, and he seems to be a decent person underneath all his fussiness. He just needs to learn how to get out of his own way.

Petzold has also written some segments of novels-within-the-movie, one that is extraordinarily moving and one that is just awful, awful, awful.

Beer, the star of Petzold’s Transit and Undine, is irresistible here as Nadja. Her Nadja teaches Leon that a woman can be sunny and fun-loving without being a ditz.

Petzold is one of cinema’s most significant contemporary auteurs. I loved and admired his simmering paranoid thriller Barbara and his Phoenix, a riveting psychodrama with a wowzer ending. He followed those with the more aspirational but, IMO, less successful Transit and Undine. Afire is his most intimate and funniest film, and I think, his most subtle and his best. Afire won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the 2023 Berlinale.

Afire opens this weekend in theaters, including the Roxie in San Francisco. It’s one of the Best Movies of 2023 – So Far.

BARBIE: a marriage of the intelligent and the silly

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Photo caption: Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie in BARBIE. Courtesy of Warner Brothers.

Thanks to a brilliant screenplay by Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, Barbie is a spectacular marriage of the intelligent and the silly, and manages to celebrate a commercial brand amid pointed social satire. It’s delightfully funny throughout, and the third act is a crescendo of hilarity.

Gerwig and Baumbach have imagined a world in which the various versions of Barbie dolls, including Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie), live in Barbie land, a female-centered but naïve, utopia. Developments force Barbie to leave Barbie Land on a mission to the human-populated Real World, and Ken (Ryan Gosling) stows away on her quest; because they live in a fantasy world, the two are unprepared for the harshness and ambiguity of the Real World, and their return to Barbie Land sparks disharmony. Will Barbie and Ken figure out their respective places in the universe?

Gerwig and Baumbach have somehow crafted a film that will satisfy those who treasure their Barbie doll, memories, those who are disturbed by Barbie’s impact on women’s body images and sexual objectification, and those who just dismiss the Barbie silliness. (I came to Barbie with one indelibly painful Barbie memory – from my bare feet stepping on Barbie shoes.) The biggest laughs come from Barbie’s relentless skewering of toxic masculinity.

America Ferrera in BARBIE. Courtesy of Warner Brothers.

Robbie and Gosling are both excellent, and there’s a huge cast of familiar stars playing various Barbies and Kens. I think that the real star of Barbie is America Ferrera, who plays Gloria, an actual human woman who befriends Barbie in the Real World. Gloria is a workaday Every Woman struggling to navigate life under the withering scorn of her teenage daughter Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt). Both Ferrera and Greenblatt deliver superlative performances, and Ferrara gets to deliver the pivotal monologue in the film.

Because much of the humor derives from surprising the audience, I am being very careful to avoid spoilers, but I can say that Barbie’s many highlights include:

  • an inspired use of the Indigo Girls’ song Closer to Fine; it’s very funny to hear Barbie characters singing it, and it has the lyrics of existential inquiry, which is what Barbie is engaged in, as silly as that sounds.
  • the performance of Kate McKinnon, perfectly cast as Weird Barbie.
  • a hilarious turn by Michael Cera as Ken’s Friend Allen;
  • a breaking-the-fourth-wall aside by narrator Helen Mirren that brings down the house.
  • one of the funniest final lines of any movie comedy.
  • closing credits with real Barbie toys, including the discontinued ones: Growing Up Skipper, pregnant Midge, etc.

It’s been a while since a movie made me laugh until I cried, but that happened when i watched the campfire guitar serenades and the “battle of the Kens”.

I rarely complement capitalists, but I am grateful to Warner Brothers for assigning a project that could have been simplistic, exploitative schlock to an artist like director Greta Gerwig. And Mattel is a very good corporate sport to have have its corporate culture, its CEO (Will Ferrell) and even its headquarters building thoroughly mocked.

At a minimum, Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach certainly deserve Oscar nominations for Original Screenplay and America Ferrara should get an Oscar nod for Supporting Actress. Barbie is one seriously funny movie.

Movies to See Right Now

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Photo caption: Cillian Murphy in OPPENHEIMER. Courtesy of Universal Pictures.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – a new review of Christopher Nolan’s epic masterpiece Oppenheimer. Also, a review of The Anonymous People, about some of the over 23 million Americans in long-term recovery from addiction who are coming out of the closet..

The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF) is running through August 6 at the Castro, the Piedmont and the Vogue through August 6; here are my four films to seek out.

REMEMBRANCE

Bo Goldman won an adapted screenplay Oscar for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and an original screenplay Oscar for Melvin and Howard.

CURRENT MOVIES

WATCH AT HOME

Jessie Buckley and Johnny Flynn in BEAST

The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:

  • Beast: finally unleashed … and untethered. Amazon (included with Prime), AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, redbox.
  • Land Ho!: rowdy geezer roadtrip to Iceland. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
  • Won’t You Be My Neighbor?: gentleness from ferocity. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, redbox.
  • The Imposter: a jaw dropper. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
  • The Secret in Their Eyes: Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
  • NUTS!: the rise and fall of a testicular empire. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
  • The Stopover: PTSD takes more than an umbrella drink…Amazon, AppleTV.